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Before I disappear again for too long again, I thought I’d give you a quick update – I uploaded a lot of pictures today, and prepared some posts so hopefully, blogging will be a bit easier. For now, I just wanted to give you an update on what’s new, and I hope everybody is okay with that. 🙂 Let’s go …

Do you remember this picture from the last blog post? These socks

are done!

I love them so much. They are very simple, just a k2,p2 pair of socks with one half-round of purl stitches before I started the toe decreases. For a bit of contrast, I did an eye of patridge heel:

And I am incredibly happy about them.

Philipp got socks:

And I am very proud of them, because I somewhat designed them on my own. They have ribbing at the back and small patches of ribbing at the front.

(I might put the ribbing all the way down to the top half of the afterthought heel next time though)

He loves them. And so do I.

Right now, there are two WIPs on my needles: For one, I picked up the Perfidy à l’orange shawl again (the pattern is only called Perfidy, but my sense of humor is a bit strange sometimes). After ripping out what I had (because I got confused and didn’t know where I was in the pattern), I started anew, but got worried that the fabric was too loose or too tight. I bound off at six pattern repeats and treated the tiny shawl like a swatch:

Then I decided I liked the fabric and accidentally undid the cast on instead of the bind off.

Then I stuffed the shawl into timeout.

A week or so later, I picked it up again, and so far, things have been going great:

Knitting is easy, the Russian joints haven’t made any problems so far, and adding wedges to the main section is happening intinuitively.

Not to brag, but I think, we’re friends now.

The other WIP is something I am really excited about. It’s a pair of socks for Philipp (again), but this time – in Matrix-coloured yarn.

It may sound weird, but I had my eye on this yarn for two years, but never really dared to buy it, because Philipp wasn’t into too-bright or too colourful socks two years ago. Since this has changed significantly, I just grabbed the yarn when I was at the LYS in September and had 300g of sock yarn in the basket already anyway, and was determined to make a pair of Sci-Fi socks for him. When I brought it home, he got very excited, commenting on how cool the yarn looked and that um, YES, he’d TOTALLY like a pair of socks out of that, but if I wanted to make something for ME that was fine as well … 😉

I cast on last Sunday, when we sat down to watch Aliens, and it was the best combination ever.

Instead of knitting vanilla socks, I decided to purl all the green stitches, and I absolutely love the effect. The socks were set aside until today, when I knit on them in between two trips to the post office and baking two batches of cookies with Philipp:

I just love the combo of Science Fiction and knitting on these socks, with some Cyberpunk ambient sound playing in the background.

Christmas knitting is done, by the way, and I’ll be showing my knits after the holidays. 😉

These last months were somewhat hard. I was pretty stressed in February already (that was why the last posting was really cheery – not), and then, at the end of March, something (a cold?) hit me so hard that I spent two weeks (2 weeks!) on sickleave, in bed, running a fever(!) and not doing much (except munching my way through two kinds of antibiotics. The second brand worked wonders, but left me stoned for half the day).

Work was a lot, in both jobs, I didn’t really have time to work on my dissertation until … the middle of April, and now I am really starting to freak out, because I have been at it so long, and I’m nowhere near I’d like to be and I’m fearing all kinds of things and … I am working on one of the original texts now, the historical/political chapter is halfway done, and I have read a ton of books and articles. I should be good. But … yeah. It’s eating away at me. There was some mess with a new contract in the second job, and when somebody asked me: “What do YOU want?”, I was really close to saying: “I want to go somewhere and sit there in solitude and sleep a lot and not talk for … dunno. Two weeks. Or more.”

Sometimes, admitting that you’re screwed is somewhat relieving, isn’t it? Like, yes, you messed up, but at least the thing is out of the bag, and now you deal with the aftermath. Let me give you examples.

Exhibit A – Socks.

I had this testknit I wanted to accomplish,

but I really could not concentrate for more than five minutes straight, so I contacted the designer immediately, and was released from the testknit. The pattern is out now, it’s Leaves Changing by Penny Schumers (if you like to knit your socks toe-up, there is a toe-up version as well), and it’s absolutely wonderful. I will post decent photographs when I am done with the second sock.

Exhibit B – Socks again.

Philipp’s sock kicked my arse pretty hard as well, so these are not finished either.

Somehow, “three times the charm” was key here, because that was how often I had to start over before the fabric was okay. I am not really happy about the cuff and the heel flap and heel, but … yeah, well. That is the way it is now. The second sock is – guess what – still in yarn stadium, I’ll get to it.

Exhibit C – the best example. A blanket.

Then, friends of ours (L, who got socks for her birthday last August, and her partner) are getting married this year, and I asked them if I should knit them a blanket. They were absoluely delighted and sent me a couple of pictures of what they wanted (I told them to think about what they wanted. I thought, they’d mention colours or something. My mistake). The blankets were gorgeous, but all crochet (L. sews, but doesn’t knit or crochet), and so I sent them a picture of EZ’s April blanket, and we settled on colours, after a few emails and I set to work.

We bought a lot of yarn.

These were the colours (the white was the border) and this was what we ended up with.

They had requested small squares, and I had a sinking gut feeling about the whole affair, to be honest. Like “I can’t do this in this time”. They told me not to worry – they could imagine it was a lot of work and if they got it in December, that would be fine – but still. Somehow, this blanket was a HUGE spot on the mental TO DO list, and it was eating away energy constantly, because whatever I was doing, I felt that I should knit on the blanket and then I fell ill (as I said) and then I entered a state in which I was constantly overwhelmed. I started to join the first squares, and then discovered that, somewhere between squares, my gauge had changed and I was making larger squares than intended.

I made more (larger) squares and joined them, and the pressure got higher and higher and I found myself getting up in the morning and being absolutely drained of energy. Small things overwhelmed me.

So I bit the bullet and when we spoke to L. on the phone earlier this week, I brought up the subject. We were chatting about what’s to come up (the next two months are going to be SO FULL at the weekends, by the way) and what has been happening, and suddenly, she said “Oh my God, and then you have the blanket to knit … DO NOT STRESS ABOUT THE BLANKET. If we get it in December or next year, that is totally fine.”

I then suggested making two cushions for the bed, and then she said: “Erm… to be honest, the bed is already full. We have a ton of cushions.”

I thought I was going to lose it, but Philipp took the phone and explained that it would be a lot of work to drag until the end of the year, and she said: “Of course, and it would be yet another constant thing on her to-do list.”

“Exactly.”

“Hey, you know what?”, she said, “forget the blanket. DON’T MAKE THE BLANKET. I’m happy to take a pair of socks like the ones you made me last year for my birthday. I love them. You know I ALWAYS have cold feet, and I love the colours, they are so, so pretty, and I am wearing them constantly.”

“No! You are not. You’ve got so much on the plate. If I get a pair of socks, I’ll be incredibly happy.”

It was almost too good to be true. She will get a pair of socks, two pairs, to be precise (one for her birthday, and one for Christmas), and her husband will get a scarf, made out of the white merino yarn.
I know that his is a no-go. I was brought up to be true to comittment, and it was incredibly hard to step up to these two, whom I have been friends with since we were all 16, and tell them: “I am sorry. I know I promised you a blanket for your wedding, and you were really looking forward to it, but it is not going to happen. I cannot do it. I’m sorry. It’s not possible right now.” I know that some people will find this impossible, and I am still beating myself up about the whole damn thing.

But then, there is – relief. Relief that I am free from this, that I have one HUGE thing less to constantly worry about, one thing less I have to drag myself to do, and free to choose yarn for a really beautiful pair of socks for her, and a gorgeous scarf pattern for him, and knitting these gifts freely, and with a happy heart, knowing that knitting brings me relaxation again, and picking up the needles is a way to let go after a hard and draining day.

So, for everybody who is experiencing a lot of stress right now, for whatever reason: Be wise about what you promise. But, please, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and admit that you have bitten off more than you can chew, and that, if you’re not allowed to spit it out, you’re probably going to choke.
Take care, my friends, and all the love! The next posting will be happier.Julia. 🙂

This summer is bewitched. For lots of folks, it’s the bad weather (we have had lots and lots of rain or very high humidity), but for me, it’s hard to keep balance right now. There is so much stuff I have to DO …

I have made a couple of socks over the past few weeks! 🙂 The baby blanket I showed you here is almost finished (I need to knit the border and then I only have to sew in the ends and wait for the baby), but sometimes, you need something quicker.

Let’s start with a pair of sneaker socks! I had been circling this yarn for a while – I still want to stashbust, but this was a 50gram-ball of Regia Color, and I thought it wouldn’t do much harm to the stash. It didn’t by the way, since I used up everything except 8grams of yarn. 😉

This is a very simple “k3,p1” sock, and I bound off in ribbing, so they do look a bit weird from the front, but they are warm enough for the colder days and short enough for the hotter ones.

The next pair of socks were for Philipp – surprise – and, funnily enough, they are made from Regia yarn as well (omg, I just realised that all the socks shown in this blogpost are made from Regia yarn. Who’d’ve known!)

I love these ones a lot … We bought the yarn on a whim, I really liked the colours in the ball, and the store we were in had a sample sock to show (VERY clever selling strategy, in my opinion!). Philipp was really smitten with the yarn, and so I knit the socks as they were; I only did the “crossed” heel flap (meaning that you alternate between “sl1, k1 – purl back” and “sl2, k1,sl1 until the last 2 sts, k2 – purl back” on the heel flap). That was all.

These socks didn’t use up as much yarn as I thought – there are still 30 grams left, enough to mix this yarn with something else for leftover socks! 🙂

Next thing on the calendar, now that my sister celebrated her 27th birthday yesterday, is the birthday of a friend of ours …
We have known her for YEARS (she went to school with us) and although I have no idea whether she’d like to get a pair of handknit socks, I know that she DOES love sewing, so it MIGHT be a hit (and no, this doesn’t have to make sense. 😉 ). If not, it’s NOT because of the yarn. It can’t be the yarn.

This is the first “Arne and Carlos” design line in the “Twilight” Colourway, and it’s GORGEOUS. GORGEOUS. Really. Hach … I didn’t manage to match the socks (as you can see from the picture above, the pattern repeat is incredibly long), but I don’t mind it and hopefully, she won’t, either. These were knit on 2,5mm needles (by accident, I only noticed it when I measured my gauge after finishing the first sock (I am so quick on the uptake ….) and realised that I was at my trusted 30sts/40rws = 4″/10cm again.

Since our friend has small feet (European 36/37, the socks could be modelled by me nevertheless), so these socks only used up 59grams which means … LEFTOVER SOCKS! (And YES, this is an afterthought heel, because I didn’t want to break up the colour repeat).

Last, but not least …

… another pair of sneaker socks for me, in the most beautiful, dazzling Regia Color. I only bought 50 grams of this, so it will become – guess what? Yeah. Sneaker socks.

I’m done! At about a quarter past 11pm, the socks were done and thus, I have finished all of my Christmas knitting for 2015! Yay! More info (and better photos) will follow after Christmas, when he will be allowed to wear and model the socks. 😉 Continue reading →

That means, the cold per se yes, but I am still tired easily, and so I decided not to go to knitting group, but rather to stay at home, because this weekend is the only possibility for me to chill for two days.

Because I have a hard time not doing something, I decided to tidy up my knitting, so I can give you a little status update. On we go! 😀 Continue reading →

Somehow, I am seeming to fall into a bit of a hiatus, huh? Well, blame it on the cold I caught this week – it had been developing since the week before, I felt chilly every now and then, slept more than I usually do … So I went to the doctor’s on Thursday and he told me to stay home, drink lots of tea and keep warm. Next week will be in full swing with my French course starting again (yay!) and lots of work and a Birthday/Halloween-Party to go to … Lots of stuff to do!

The bunnies are done! I can’t quite believe it … I got them done in time (which is, earlier than Midnight on Friday), and I am going to show them later this week (sorry, but I want to write a good blog post. They deserve it.) This is gonna be good! 🙂

Since the last two days have been days of resting, I think that now is the time to show you two little items I made and to talk about what’s next!